Vintage Vibe Guitars Jazzmaster

Single coil pickups. Alnico V rod magnets. 8.46k neck, 9.44k bridge.

Installed these in a Crafted in Japan Jazzmaster, replacing the stock pickups. Interesting thing, these stock pickups. If you can't tell right away from the sound, when you take the lid off 'em you can see they're actually Strat pickups wearing a big hat. Sneaky Japanese. They had 1 Mega Ohm pots for both the volume and the tone potentiometers, which is nuts.

The output level is nice and moderately low. Vintage, I reckon. They never feel anemic, and that's what matters.

My amp is a Traynor YCV50, and I've got a 212 cab with a Vintage 30 and a G12H30, so it's essentially a Fender-through-Marshall setup but with a better clean channel. I use about 6 effects pedals, but they're all either true-bypass or close enough, so let's not worry about 'em.

The first thing I noticed about these pickups was just how GREAT they sound. The second thing I noticed was how balanced the tonal response is. They're not compressed, but they don't really have one frequency that dominates the others. No nasal anything. I will say they have a good bass response, though. More bass than I'm used to from a Fender, but I mean that in a good way. In no way am I saying it is bassy. There is less treble response than narrower single coils, but they're still plenty bright. They don't get into ice pick territory in my experience, though.

The best way I can describe the neck position is deep. With some tone roll-off, it really is a great jazz sound. The bridge position has a well defined upper mid response, but it still lacks the harsh treble associated with most Fender guitars. The middle position is hum-canceling, but it's one of the most transparent hum-canceling positions I've ever heard. There's always a little lost in there, but there ain't much missing to my ears. It's everything you'd want out of a neck/bridge blend, getting the right amount of both pickups.

I play what would be called rock music, but with almost too many twists to describe. I've got elements of funk, traditional Spanish guitar, folk, jazz, blues...I basically take a little bit of everything and make it into something else entirely. For my style I need plenty of clarity for chords, and these pickups deliver. I don't use much gain except for solos, staying either clean or sitting in the lower-mid gain distortion region.

This is my first experience with boutique pickups, and now I can't go back. I've been playing three years, which is just about long enough to know what I like. My other main guitar is an HH Jaguar that I installed GFS Mean 90s in a year back.

Story! I played nothing but my Jazzmaster for a month straight (and we're talking about 3 to 5 hours a day) after I installed these pickups because my I ran out of strings for my Jaguar. I restrung the Jag a week back, and I gotta say that something was definitely missing. A lot less tonal complexity in the other pickups, and the middle position! It just seems so dead compared to the Vintage Vibes. As soon as they open their new shop, I'm getting some of their P-90s, because I'm sold on the sound. These are the best pickups I've used in my short career. The best thing I can say about them is that they sound exactly how a Jazzmaster pickup should sound, and they do that damn well.